Esoterica Tobacciana Stonehaven

Just a short update. (followed by a long rant) I ordered more Stonehaven and received, indeed, Stonehaven. After a little research on this site, I think the last bag I got was mislabeled Peacehaven. I certainly won't be buying that one soon. As much as I like Stonehaven though, I'm leaving it at 3 stars. It's just that good.

10/10/2007: This is a new review because some things have changed for me with Stonehaven and the old review said, well, nothing.

I was ready to bump this up to four stars because the last few ounces I've smoked were outstanding. Tin smell was great, rubbing out was fun and, with a little dry out it smoked clean all the way down. Plenty of vitamin N.

Now, I open up an eight ounce bag and inside the plastic case sits a complete mess. What's this? It's not Stonehaven, I know that much. The flakes are light to dark brown and very mottled. They're cut twice as thick and smashed together in there. I'm thinking somebody at Esoterica wanted to get off work a little early and slacked on the job. Esoterica's consistency had always impressed me.

So, I open the plastic box. It smells vaguely like Stonehaven, but I'm still thinking this is a different blend. This broken flake is so wet it's not smokable. Even overnight drying doesn't help. Two days later and it's still damp, still won't smoke and tastes only vaguely like Stonehaven. I've dried some crispy and it doesn't stay lit. It smokes with substantial bite when it does burn. (There is no date on the sack).

The black thin flakes that rub out easily into soft needles and smoke and taste great are gone. There's seven ounces of a sad impostor in my Stonhaven jar. If I can smoke my way through it and if I order more, I'll be expecting the old style. I assume this was a mistake. If they changed the blend, or have given it over to Orlik (ha!)and this is the new stuff, you can bet your favorite pipe it'll get no stars from me.



Something else-- After a few more bowls of this, (I'm a trooper) I realize 2.5 things. 1.) This is cased with 'Stonehaven essence'. 2.) The base tobaccos taste very much like they were blended by McClelland. The McC twang is there. 2.5) I taste no burley. --- This is one strange sack of tobacco. Maybe this is the real 'Stonehaven on crack'. Or could it be a mislabeled Peacehaven?

This is a pretty good blend--it has a smokey, chocolatey cigar-like character, a sweet virginia element, and something else that tastes like raspberries (another reviewer said apricots, but I've always found that imaginary raspberries taste a lot like imaginary apricots anyway). I hear Stonehaven is not cased (via the same reviewer) but if this is indeed the case, pun intended, it sure acts like it. It bubbles and fizzes and turns a weird orange colour. It gunks up the bottom of the bowl after a short while with something that smells and tastes like road tar. It "ghosts" the pipe like one would expect from an aromatic. This may be something inherent in the fermentation process and not a bona fide "casing," but IMO if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, a pragmatist may safely treat it like a raspberry casing. Stonehaven really needs its own pipe, not only to permit one to enjoy its subtleties, but because it is utterly incapable of cohabiting a pipe with any other blend. It's tasty, with a nice nic hit, but I'm not sure it'll ever be a "go to" blend for me.

This sublime flake is wonderful to smell, a mixture of molasses and oak casks. Something about the note of this tobacco makes me think of old leather-bound books, in a pleasant way. I folded a flake of this into a large bowl, after allowing it to sit out for a little while. This lit well, but required a few lights along the way to keep it trucking along. The taste of Esoterica is somewhat different then what I received from the bag, as much of the sweetness fades back during the bowl, bringing a musty nutty flavor forward. As I smoked this I found that the flavors on this flake really move around quite a bit occasionally I will get chocolate or wine taste, to have them recede back allowing the sweet molasses or nutty flavors back in center stage (depending on where I was in the bowl.)

While this was a somewhat slower burning tobacco, I don't think it would be a good all day tobacco for me. It is simply too rich and while the Virginia isn't tangy, or loud; I feel as though smoking too much of this would fatigue my palate heavily. This blend is something of an issue for me as I would love to smoke this occasionally, but I don't think I could smoke it all the time, and so I would need to jar it up into something like 1oz batches to break out every couple months.

Update 8/19/06: This is my first retraction review. Being somewhat new to the pleasures of pipe smoking, I hastily critiqued this blend several months agoe and gave it 4 stars without sufficient testing. Although Stonehvn?s unique presentation of jerky strips suggests meticulous blending, appearances can be misleading. Nevertheless, it?s one of the best Virginia Burley blends out there, but I don?t find myself wanting to smoke it with any regularity. I purchased an 8 oz. package of this after reading other reviews and thought it would fit my liking, but this baccy is just a little too flat. Now, I have a jar with about a dozen jerky strips remaining and I believe their multiplying. Yah, every time I grab a strip and smoke one, I think just a few more weeks and this jar will make room for new weed, this has been going on for two months. Not a huge downgrade, still recommended, 3 of 4 stars

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Upon opening the plastic tray, the aroma struck me as fermenting licorice. After rubbing, you'll be staring at a pile of what appears to be splintered black toothpicks, just stuff them in your pipe and smoke-um. This is one of the finest Burley/Virginian blends available. I understand that Esoterica maintains tremendous consistency, and I'm happy at that piece of news.

A very interesting baccy indeed. By description alone one would expect this to be very similiar to Dark Star. One would then be very surprised to discover upon the match that it is not. They are certainly not interchangeable. I love DS and find I smoke at least a tin every year. (which is quite alot when you smoke a bazillion new ones all the time!) Stonehaven however, is more refined and more in the vein of the Lakeland District than DS ever dreamed of being. The high range of this tobacco incorporates the sourness of a fine white wine, while the bass notes tend too lead themselves towards dark chocolate and raisins. How do these flavors, which seem so dissident, go together and create such a seamless and tasty tobacco? That is the question isn't it. I think perhaps the burley content goes a long way towards marrying the flavors and not to mention adding one heck of a whallop of nicotene to the party (and no this isn't the type of burley that you find in Carter Hall pouches). All in all, someone had too have whipped up some tobacco blending magic to have come up with this wonderful blend. Too rich to smoke regularly, none the less, it is exquisite.